Your MSP company is naturally going to get better employees if you offer them something worthwhile. If you’ve got low ceilings and a short career path, you’re only going to get retirees and those looking for a holding pattern while they find a better job.
If you offer employees incentives, reward good work, design positions which can be attained through hard work and dedication and actually give them some window into a lucrative future, you’re more apt to acquire employees concerned with long-term employment.
Be Discriminating
When you’ve got more candidates interested in your MSP company, you can afford to be more discriminating in employment. The idea is to build a reputation as the place to be in terms of technology. Your career path needs to be competitive, and this means understanding competitors. If you can’t afford to pay out the same salary, you’ve got to outpace them in terms of benefits or in terms of professional viability. Think “silver linings”.
Certainly, a midget can’t play basketball like Shaquille O’neal, but Shaq can’t sneak through an air duct or fit in a mini cooper. Even if you’re not a massive corporation, you do have advantages over competitors. You’ve just got to find them and make them desirable to prospective employees.
Tout Advantages
Outreach programs, courting new workers, should emphasize your advantages during the interview process. In a way, if you’re doing this right, being more discriminating as you filter through prospective team members can work in your favor as far as PR goes. Just be sure you follow up with candidates who didn’t quite make the cut, or you may incidentally be seeding a vendetta. The tech community is large but small. Sometimes, employees that couldn’t work for you are ideal for competitors–you need not arm them!
Solidified Operations
Your MSP company should design a career path for employees— empowering, enabling, and ensuring them. These things ultimately optimize your company, making it more viable operationally, as well as competitively. So, facilitate career paths for your tech team.